


The Truth at the Bottom

by overused_underrated



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Aziraphale's Bookshop (Good Omens), Dead Aziraphale (Good Omens), Drunk Crowley (Good Omens), Drunken Confessions, Drunkenness, Emotional Crowley (Good Omens), Emotional Hurt, End of the World, Hurt Crowley, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, M/M, Sad Crowley (Good Omens), Scene: The Bookshop Fire (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-28
Updated: 2019-11-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:34:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21595450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/overused_underrated/pseuds/overused_underrated
Summary: Well...I definitely failed NaNoWriMo, but I'm still writing!The bookshop is gone- consumed by the fire. Smoke litters the air and Crowley...Crowley is left alone to deal with everything. It's more than he can handle sober, so he goes to get a drink
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 46





	The Truth at the Bottom

The bookshop was gone. All that remained was a smoldering pile of rubble, leaving nothing but a ghost in its wake. Crowley couldn’t bear to watch the flames consume everything he had once loved, so he abandoned the fire and sought refuge in a local bar. The smell of smoke was embedded in his clothes. Soot had found a home under his fingernails; ash lined his lungs as well as his fingertips, leaving cruel reminds with every touch that this was not a dream. 

He sat, alone. There was nothing else. No one else. He was alone- truly alone- for the first time in millennia. The feeling didn’t sit well with him. In an ill-advised attempt to fill the void growing inside him, he tried to drink it away. Bottle after bottle, he drank himself into the biggest stupor of his life. Rome didn't compare, Golgotha, not even after Freddie died. Crowley didn’t want to see clearly; he didn’t want to feel anything. All the demon wanted was to curl up into the darkness and find a home there. To nestle into the great nothingness and be swept away in his misery. To become undone at the seams and ultimately forgotten. Instead, he found himself staring at the emptiness of his fourth bottle of whiskey. It wasn’t enough. There wasn’t enough alcohol on the entire planet that could grant him what he wished. Rather than think about the practical limits of his experiment, he ordered a fifth bottle and continued on his mission: finding obliteration. 

How do you stop smelling yourself? When your clothes are completely soaked in a foul stench? A reminder of a bad memory. How do get the burn of sulfur out of your lungs without them hurting? Without gasping for air? When does the reminder of “you are alone” begin to fade? After the credits? Before the next show? Does it ever? Or does it remain like a broken subtitle, lingering on the screen well past its curtain call? The answer to that cannot be found at the bottom of any bottle, nor can it be found in a lonely, rundown bar. Crowley didn’t care- he wanted to forget. Pretend that Aziraphale was fine, safe in his bookshop, like he always was. 

He smelled himself as he drank straight from the bottle. His throat betrayed him. It had reached its limit.  _ No more _ it commanded. Crowley coughed up the burning liquid from his lungs, his tongue getting coated in whiskey and sulfur. It was a bad combination, one that left a sour look on his face. The memories came flooding back to him. The fire. The bookshop. Blood. Aziraphale on the floor.  _ NO! _

Crowley smashed his fist on the bottle, shattering it into a thousand pieces. One lodged itself in the side of his hand, blood gushed from it. Crowley didn’t notice. He was too drunk to notice the pain and too sober to care. The bartender ran over to him, mopping up the booze and broken glass. When the bar was clear, the man took a clean rag and began to wrap Crowley’s hand.

“Leave it…” 

The bartender looked at Crowley and stupidly ignored him. He wiped away the blood and inspected the wound. He gingerly removed the shard from the demon’s hand, revealing a bit a silver fluid with it. Crowley had cut himself deeper than he realized.

“You’re probably going to need stitches...can I call an ambulance?”

Crowley shifted in his seat, but didn’t reclaim his hand. “No...there’s no point.”

The bartender wrapped his cloth tightly around Crowley’s palm. “It might not stop bleeding. And it could get infected. Really, you should-”

“Should what? Care?” he barked at the man. The bartender did not get paid enough for this. “Why? Caring never did any good, look at me!” Crowley stood drunkenly, his point a bit muddied. But he standing. The demon waved his one arm about, all willy-nilly. He was completely disheveled, drunk out of his mind, and bleeding all over a quasi-reputable bar. 

The bartender remained calm. “I’m guessing you lost someone you care for?”

Crowley remained still, eyes fixed on the man behind his glasses. “More than you could ever know…”

“Well...I’m not an expert in any sense of the word, but from my experience, grief is love. Love...you have nowhere to put anymore. And if you didn’t love them, it wouldn't hurt so bad. But, wouldn’t that be worse? To not feel _anything_?” 

Crowley was too drunk to properly process what this man had said. All he could utter was a quiet  _ ngk.  _

“Please sir, can I call someone for you? To get this taken care of?”

“What do you do?” 

The man looked cross. “What do you mean?” he asked, puzzled by the question.

“What do you do...when you have nowhere to put your love? What do you do?” His hand was limp in the bartender’s hand. As for the rest of him, he was soft and mushy. Like a rotten Gumby figure- all limbs and no strength. 

“Well...you need to remember them. All the good times, all the love you shared. And you need to take time for yourself. You need to keep eating, drink water,  _ take care of any bleeding wounds _ . And then…”

“Then?” he looked up, eyes escaping from behind their lenses. Gracing the world with just an ounce of their sorrow. 

“You need to forgive yourself. There’s nothing you could have done to stop what happened from happening. You can’t change the past, but you can focus on your future.”

Crowley hung his head. “ ‘S not going to be much of a future anyway…”

The man looked at the demon, seeing him as he truly was. “And why is that?”

Crowley, for the first time in his life, told the unabridged truth willingly and without sarcasm. “Because tomorrow the world is going to end, and life as we know it will be destroyed.” 

The bartender shook his head in disbelief, “Oh, is that so…?”

Crowley whispered, with nothing but fear and despair in his voice, “...yes.”


End file.
